Bingo
Bingo aka Housey Housey is a very popular game globally. The game is especially popular in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The origins of the bingo game remain unknown today, which is why many people in the UK consider the game “truly British”.
The process of the game is fairly simple and doesn’t involve mathematical or other calculations; players need to simply tick off the numbers on their bingo tickets, as they are being called out by the caller. Players need to get the winning combination on their card/s to win the game and acquire the price.
The Bingo Card typically has 15 numbers on it with nine columns and three rows, each with five numbers and four blanks. The numbers in each of the columns varies from one to three.
The caller in the bingo game, is the person who calls out numbers players tick off and validates the wining tickets. He also reveals the grand prize of the game before it starts, which usually happens straight after the caller says “Eyes Down”.
Random Numbers The numbers coming up have to be random for the bingo game to be fair, which is why there are three different methods the numbers can be drawn out; by drawing counters from a bag, by electronic Random Number Generator or by mechanical draw machines that selects different balls at random.
There are three main Winning Combinations player could get on the card.
Line, which has to be horizontal and cover five numbers on the bingo card.
Two Lines that need to cover two horizontal lines of five numbers on the same card.
Full House, which means the player has all the fifteen numbers on the ticket.
The usual scenario is for bingo to start with one line bingo game, then two line bingo game and lastly a full house bingo game.
There are exceptions though that play only full house games for instance, such as UK’s National Bingo Game, where only full house games are players between players across the country. The participating bingo halls are connected by the common computer technology that calculates the jackpot from across the country. This is why National Bingo Game is the most popular bingo game in the UK. It has huge payouts, sometimes jumping over a million pounds. Nevertheless, recently Gala Bingo, which has the most number of bingo halls in the UK and is the leading online bingo operator as well, has announced its intentions to pull out of the game in June 2008.
Attending Bingo Halls has become a slight tradition between British public, as they admit to coming for social and entertainment values as well as their chances of hitting big cash prize. UK bingo halls have been recently hit by the legal changes that brought the industry into the worrying position with many bingo halls closing due to the fall in revenues and attendances. Despite the fact that other laws were changes not in favour of bingo business; the main hit came from the smoking ban implemented before summer 2007. The smoking ban put into action everywhere around the UK seemed to have turned bingo lovers from attending bingo clubs to playing more online bingo at home, where the social factor is strictly virtual and has a very different appeal.
